Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

mathematic stipends w wld better be spent in selzsies far two professors
in any of the schools; he objected to the appropriation of the sum seven
months in advance of the budget; he insisted that not the School, but the
Trustees, should approve the individual stipendiaries. Flexner, battling
with Professor Veblen the while over the admission of toe many members,
and questioning the merit of many of them, but not revealing his suspicion
that the moxe numerous they became, the more hope Vablen hzd that addition-
al space would be made available, battled equally vzliantly with Dr. Weed,
defending the stipend fund as a flexible oblipation which could, if neces-
sary, be cut or omitted if the financisl situation be-me worse, but slso
maintaining that it was a most valuable instrument for bringing scholars
to Princeton for their awn and Princeton's benefit. He rejected outrfght
the suggestion that the Board wes competent t o pass an individual stipen-
diaries. Perhsps neither m n convinced the other, but it was nevertheless
significant that later Flexner named Dr. Weed Chairman of the Budget Cm-
Very shortly after the last discussion in t h Board, Professors
*lexander and Veblen addressed a memorandum to the Director entitled
"Building the School of Mathen-atics." In ft they asked him to purchase
for the School of Hathematies a defunct dining club across Wairhington Street
f xom Palmer Hell, on the ground that more space would be needed by the
School in view of their intention to enter the fields of biology and l'
chwi~tr~.~~ Flemer, disc~unting almost autcmatically the proposed u-
pansion, undertook an investigation of his own into the situation in Pine
Hall, interviewing individually all the forty-one umbers enrolled in the
first semester 1936-1937. An intensive debate ensued between himself and